Why no one mourns the loss of the family chicken farm

A short history of poultry in the Ninth District

"I've never heard anyone bemoan the decline of the family chicken
farm," observes Earl Fuller, professor of agricultural economics
at the University of Minnesota. That comment, while humorous, reveals
something about how society views different components of production
agriculture. Poultry production is definitely lower on society's
pecking order than milking cows or raising hogs. But the reasons
may not be immediately clear.

The spread of large capital-intensive hog operations is perhaps
the most hotly debated agricultural issue in the Upper Midwest and
occupied center stage in the 1998 sessions of the South Dakota and
Minnesota legislatures. Those who seek to limit the growth of such
operations point to the danger to the environment they may pose,
but also to the way in which they are a competitive threat to the
smaller traditional family hog farm. Yet all aspects of farm poultry
productionbroilers, eggs and turkeyswent through an
even more pronounced concentration over 20 years ago, with scarcely
a nod from society as a whole. Why the difference?

Similarly, the decline of the traditional family dairy farm receives
frequent and often impassioned comment in the public square. In
Minnesota, the Legislature has repeatedly considered measures to
prop up dairy producers' incomes by, in effect, imposing a tax on
retail sales of milk, the proceeds of which would be funneled back
to farmers. It is difficult to imagine something similar happening
with regard to egg or turkey prices.

Again, why the difference? That question reveals much about the
evolution of American agriculture and the degree to which the ethos
of the farm remains embedded in American culture long after most
Americans became city dwellers.

A brief poultry history

As settlement and agriculture spread across Ninth District states in
the last half of the 19th century, most farms had domesticated fowls.
But few sold poultry products other than on an occasional basis. Chickens
and turkeys were subsistence enterprises, produced for home consumption.
Before refrigeration and rapid transportation, if a family wanted fresh
eggs or chicken, they had to raise them themselves. Poultry were an extension
of the family kitchen, not a major business enterprise, for most farmers.
Only on the periphery of large cities were there specialized chicken farms
that sold most of their output to urban markets.

As the railroad grid filled in and with the advent of refrigerator
cars, producing eggs and chickens became more of a cash enterprise
on many farms, particularly in eastern areas of the district. In
the first half of this century, farmers, especially farm wives,
would raise more poultry than was needed for home consumption, taking
the surplus to town to sell to local merchants, who often acted
as buying agents for larger firms. At times, old hens could also
be crated and sold in town to be shipped off for processing somewhere
else.

But such activities generally were very secondary to other farm
enterprises such as corn, wheat, milk, beef or pork. Poultry operations
were a source of "egg money" and a chore for children; chickens
were a backup of subsistence even when crops failed, prices fell
and off-farm employment was unknown and unavailable, as during the
Great Depression.

Farms grew in size and became less diverse in the post-war period.
As farmers concentrated on fewer enterprises, chickens were often
the first to go. For the first to abandon poultry, less innovative
neighbors served as a handy source of fresh eggs and chickens. Eventually,
people simply bought these products in town. Smaller families meant
fewer children to do chores, and kids moved more rapidly into taking
care of cattle or hogs.

But not all farmers stopped raising poultry. Some got bigger instead
of getting out. Turkey production went down this road first. By
the late 1950s, turkey production was concentrated on only a few
farms with relatively large numbers of birds. Many producers entered
into informal or formal agreements with processors, who often provided
specialized medicines, ration ingredients and advice to their larger
producers. While some continued to produce their own eggs for hatching,
others specialized into producing chicks or fattening them.

Similar concentration went on in chicken production, where there
was also increasing differentiation into egg and broiler production.
Traditionally, most chickens that were eaten were old hens: Killing
a young chicken tender enough for the frying pan was an uncommon
luxury, not a weekly occurrence. But post-war affluence and technologic
innovation in production combined to make the broiler, a young chicken
bred and raised strictly for meat rather than egg production, a
common part of many families' diet.

As producing eggs and broilers became separate specialized enterprises,
units grew in size, and the relationships between farmers and processors
or providers of inputs became more formal. For example, a feed company
might supply chicks and other inputs in addition to feed, or chicken
and egg processors might supply farmers with needed inputs and then
guarantee to buy the output on some fixed or formula price basis.
Soon such aid included financing for new facilities.

These linkages varied from firm to firm and from region to region.
Some economists distinguish between "contracting" and "coordination."
Others generically refer to all such arrangements as vertical integration.
By the 1970s, most birds and eggs were produced under such arrangements,
and cash or "spot" markets had ceased to exist in most regions.

These developments were not without controversy. Small producers
felt the pinch as their farmgate price shrank due to large-scale
competition, and as the assembly costs of traditional egg buyers
ballooned with shrinking scale. Some decried the loss of decision-making
autonomy that went with agreements that specified virtually all
the details of bird and egg production. But in regions with processing
plants, some farmers found that processor financing and management
advice were a way for young farmers to build up a steady, if not
spectacular, income.

As the size and scale of production units grew, their location
changed. Southern states, with cheap labor and relatively favorable
weather increased their market share. Within any state or region,
production tended to cluster around existing or new processing plants,
and wither away elsewhere. In states such as North Dakota and Montana,
the sector shrank to a very few producers. Where most land grant
universities had poultry science professors at midcentury, by the
1990s they were concentrated in a few states.

Some cultural variables

While history explains much about why we view the poultry industry differently
than other livestock enterprises, some cultural factors enter also. "Your
average chicken just doesn't have a lot of personality," says Marcella
Van Dam, a southwest Minnesota farmer who occasionally works for a local
hatchery. On family farms, cows were few in number, lived a long time
and had physical characteristics that facilitated individualized identification.

Not so with chickens. Even on traditional family farms, there
were usually more than a hundred if there were any at all. They
lived only a couple of years or less before being sold or canned
for soup. And virtually all looked and acted pretty much alike.
Some "broody" old hens were conspicuous for their bad tempers, very
few indeed were endearing.

In rural culture, there is a hierarchy of public esteem. Being
a dairyman or cattleman carried more weight than raising hogs in
some areas, and even raising sheep was a rung above chickens.

Some farmers, of course, liked their chickens. They tended to
be the ones who got bigger as their neighbors got out. But on most
farms, the farm flocks slowly melted away through the 1950s and
1960s. Eggs were just something else to put on the grocery list.

A few farm families still raise broilers for their own consumption.
Chicks can be ordered for the spring, put into the old chicken house,
and be safely in the freezer before the fall harvest begins. For
some, the annual fall chicken slaughter is an exercise in nostalgia,
a return to the simpler and more grounded life of their youth. For
others, it is just a reminder of why they left the farm in the first
place.